“The International Art Exhibition in Solidarity with Palestine”. Kristine Khouri & Rasha Salti.

In 1965, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) proclaimed the launch of a revolution in its political program, and its armed struggle to liberate Palestine from occupation. The organization was structured to operate like a government in exile, replete with executive and legislative bodies, a constitutional text, a higher command, as well as military and civilian leaderships. In 1970, the higher command and institutional headquarters moved from Amman (Jordan) to Beirut (Lebanon).

For the PLO, its constituency and leadership, as well as for the Arab League officialdom, Arab intelligentsia and populations, the liberation of Palestine, a country occupied by the state of Israel, was an anti-imperialist, anti-colonial struggle for self-determination. That struggle was as formally political as it was discursive and representational. Around 1968, a group of artists and intellectuals established a special unit or department within the PLO to work within the realm of culture to articulate and disseminate representation of Palestine, firstly to a population dispersed in refugee camps across Arab countries, and exiled worldwide, as well as galvanize support for the revolution.

The International Art Exhibition in Solidarity with Palestine was organized by the Unified Information Office of the PLO in Beirut, at one of the PLO’s buildings in 1978. The two principal organizers were Ezzedine Kalak and Mona Saudi. The exhibition was intended to establish a repository, or seed, of a collection with the ambition of establishing a museum of international contemporary art, in solidarity with Palestine.

The exhibition contained nearly 200 artworks donated by 177 artists from 28 countries. The array of artists participating in the exhibition included internationally acclaimed names like Matta, Tàpies, Mirò, to name three. What is amazing is not the panoply of celebrities, nor the reach of countries, rather the fact that the exhibition took place in a country where civil war was raging and a city that was staunchly dividing into its western and eastern flanks.

The presentation will focus on two themes: firstly, a documentary reconstitution of the exhibition from archival materials recovered thus far; secondly, how Arab posters were used to produce a visual representation of Palestine to the national movement’s constituency.

The History of Arab Modernities in the Visual Arts Study Group is a long-term research project, initiated in 2008, whose mission is to investigate key questions in the history and historiography of modern art in the Arab world. The founding members are Kristine Khouri and Rasha Salti, both based in Beirut. The project is independent and aims to propose a space for experimentation in methodologies and archival practice.